Why is Darjeeling called "the champagne of tea"?

oriental beauty is an oolong and its resemblance and taste is diffrent than a darjeeling. its very diffrent i must say ... please ... the appearance itself is very diffrent from that of darjeeling and so is the wither and fire.. there is a serious confusion if you are comparing oriental beauty with darjeelings.. these are completely two diffrent teas made very diffrently and they taste very diffrent...

I can see you didnt read the previous posts on the subject. There are two OB. One I call Classic which is the Darjeeling type. The other is any bug eaten crop from Taiwan cashing in on the name mostly rolled green leaves. Plug OB and Darjeeling into a search engine and read the blogs describing the two similarities. It was also marketed in this country as a Darjeeling prior to WWII. Taiwan also makes a decent Assam. They imported the bushes and have the climate and soil to match.

Jim

What?

Oriental Beauty doesn't taste anything at all like Darjeeling to me. If anything, it has a very strong wintergreen kind of flavour that is very distinctive and easily distinguished from any other tea.

--scott

I don't know. But I know that there's a lot of stuff that is being exported _from_ Darjeeling that was not grown _in_ Darjeeling.

Not that it isn't good... I have had some Sikkim teas that were excellent Darjeeling-style teas... but they weren't Darjeelings.

--scott

I care more about taste than about certificates or seals. I generally go for the "Tippy Nepal" which has a similar taste to a Darjeeling at a far better price/quality ratio. (Rumour is that Nepal teas are imported into Darjeeling...)

I thought you were somehow discrediting the IBSA. So it still remains the only way to legitimize Darjeeling. I dont know the current state of affairs but the India Tea Board was under the gun by the WTO to redefine what was meant by Darjeeling. I guess other countries were claiming their Darjeeling was just as good and deserved trade protection under the same name. I drink my share of Sikkim. One one side of the street we have Darjeeling on the otherside Sikkim. If I was selling DJ Id call it OB. I could make more money.

Jim